- Would you dare taste random sky meat?
The Bath County History Museum is a small, local museum in Owingsville, Kentucky. It might not be a place you’d ever think to visit, unless you happen to have family in the area or something.
But you should if you want to learn more about the bizarre event known as the Kentucky Meat Shower.
Nearly 150 years ago, a farm in Kentucky got caught in a downpour. Instead of water, however, pieces of mystery meat fell from the sky.
Despite various tests, no one has been able to figure out exactly what the meat was or why it rained down. That’s despite a chunk that has been preserved for all these years and DNA tested.
That chunk belonged to Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, but the school recently returned the meat to the Bath County History Museum. Now, it’s the main attraction at the new Kentucky Meat Shower exhibit.
You know, in case you want to see a 150-year-old piece of… Something.
It’s Raining Flesh, Hallelujah!
But what an earth was the Kentucky Meat Shower? Well, that’s an excellent question that nobody’s really been able to answer.
We know the event happened slightly before noon on March 3, 1876. On the day, a local farmer’s wife Rebecca Crouch was making soap on the porch of their homestead near Olympia Springs.
Suddenly, she spotted something strange about 40 feet away from the house. A piece of what appeared to be red meat fell from the sky.
And then another. And another.
For several minutes, chunks of meat kept slapping down onto the ground. Mrs. Crouch fetched her husband to witness the event, and they naturally took it as a sign from God.
The story doesn’t tell what they thought the meat rain signified. We assume they thought it was good, though, considering they supposedly gathered a wagonload of the meat.
Yet, no one in the local community could figure out what sort of meat it was. Reports from the time state it looked sort of like beef, but it tasted more like lamb or venison.
Oh yeah, two men gave the meat a taste test. Those were some brave souls.
Theories Upon Theories
The strange event wasn’t something the locals just imagined. The meat rain was covered in several of the time’s major publications, including Scientific American.
Many scientists also tried to find a non-divine explanation for why meat would fall from the sky — and whether the stuff was meat at all.
Doctor Leopold Brandeis suggested that the meaty matter was in fact Nostoc, a type of cyanobacteria also known as star jelly. After rain, it can form large, occasionally red lumps that someone might mistake for meat.
However, it did not rain (water) on the day of the Meat Shower. Additionally, Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton who examined the meat determined that it was a piece of lung from a horse — or an infant human.
According to him, horse and baby lungs are virtually identical in structure. We’d love to know what the guys who ate the meat thought of that.
Two further natural phenomena could have been at play. The first is “blood rain,” which results from red algae spores dying natural raindrops a blood-like color. That, however, wouldn’t explain the meat chunks.
Additionally, weather phenomena known as up-spouts are known to draw fish and frogs out of bodies of water, causing them to “rain” down at another spot. Here, the question is where the weird wind pattern would’ve gotten the meat chunks from.
Finally, we have what’s currently the most popular explanation — the meat was vomited up by birds of prey flying by. Vultures, buzzards, and other such birds do occasionally puke bloody meat if they’ve just eaten and need to make a quick escape.
However, the Crouches supposedly filled a wagon with the meat. We’re pretty sure someone would’ve made not of such a massive flock of vomiting vultures.
Returned to Sender
It would be easy to dismiss the questionable results of the past tests as failures of not-so-well-developed scientific procedures. However, even modern science can’t tell us where the meat came from or what it is.
You see, one piece of the shower meat was preserved. It’s not exactly clear who did it, but we know it was somebody who saw the meat rain or was there immediately afterward.
The jarred mystery meat was passed down in the family until it made its way to the collections of Transylvania University. While there, the meat was subjected to a DNA test to once and for all determine its origin.
The test came back as “inconclusive.”
Perhaps that’s part of the reason why Transylvania University decided to send the meat back to Bath County from whence it came. It’s obvious the meat refuses to be identified, so it might as well be on display where it originally fell to earth.
Wonder if it still tastes like deer after being pickled for 148 years.